God mend thine every flaw

"America, America, God mend thine every flaw!"
Independence Day in the Pearl District.

In past years, my neighbors in the courtyard have hung flags from their balconies. This Fourth of July, nada.

I went around the Pearl looking for flags. There were few to be seen. The one at the Post Office was hanging limply from the top of its tall pole, not exactly a photo op. The only other one I saw was this cheap (probably made in China) translucent knock-off stuck in a hanging basket of begonias. One of those just-in case, leave-no-stone-unturned acts of a local realtor.

I wonder if this lack of patriotic fervor is evidence of general disgust with our current state of affairs, local and international. Where is the America of the Marshall Plan? Where is the America of the Four Freedoms? Where is the America of Brown v. Board of Education and Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe v. Wade?

The gap between the 1% and everyone else widens yearly. Our children are undereducated, our workers are underemployed, and our frail elderly are warehoused and drugged. This is not the American I grew up to believe in, but it's the America I live in now. America, America, God mend thine every flaw!

We hardly ever have music at daily mass, but this morning we had a cantor, an organist, and patriotic hymns. After church, more songs on the radio: God Bless America and This Land Is Your Land. They filled my eyes with tears. They're among the ones I blipped on Memorial Day.

This Independence Day, the horrors of war and its infinite cost are uppermost in my mind, and the hymn that speaks for me is this one (to the tune of Finlandia).

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
A song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on clover-leaf and pine;
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

- Lloyd Stone